APEX II
by Jonas Grant
Summary: Kept wanting to finish the first Apex, but the character's limitations were always getting in the way, so I figured I'd come up with a new character. If you're looking for a story about dinosaurs on Pandora, this is the right place, my friend, stick around.


**COSTA RICA**

 **ISLA MATANCEROS**

 **October 2154**

I met her in a bar in Nice. Can't quite wrap my head around that fact; Two years after an IED shortened me by about two feet, I met a pretty little redhead reading a science book in a bar. It was the type of place where all the college kids met and chilled out, a hip place, a pretentious place I would have avoided like the plague in my Legion time.

She was in her mid thirties, studying xeno-genetics for her job, I dared not bring up the fact I'd barely squeezed my way into a literature minor, but she had this piercing look that kept me from lying.

We drank expensive wine, for which she paid, and, at her request, I talked, all night, about the Foreign Legion; how I'd led a recon team before my twenty-third birthday and lost my legs after my twenty-fourth. I told her about every member of my team, what their plans were once they received french citizenship, what pushed them to leave their homes and enlist in a foreign country's military, how they died because I let my quick rise through the ranks cloud my judgment.

Clearly my story resonated with her, because we spent all day in her hotel room and a week later, she showed up at my dorm with a job offer.

"Hey, N'amour, you awake?" She asks, sitting up in her link bed.

I scoff, sitting up in mine, "You don't sleep after dancing a tango with a Rex." I owe that woman everything, from my new job to the mechanical legs I stand and fetch coffee, "Think they'll be fine tonight?"

She wraps her arms around my chest, running her slender fingers along the InGen logo, and says . "They're probably safer without us holding their leash, don't worry."

I pour myself a mug, add sugar and sweetener and she just steals it before I get a sip, so I pour another while Marie steps outside, stretching and yawning in the morning air. We spent all night running around the woods, pushing our avatar's senses to their limits. They're still young, though, and we're slow learners, straight up ran into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I can still hear it roar its frustration at our escape. The avatars know to keep quiet, but I am certain they are chittering away their excitement in the darkness.

On a board, over the coffee machine and opposite the link beds, is every vocalisation we know, written like a musical score. I played guitar in high school, thought it would make me popular, so I always read these as being played by a rope instrument, though our avatars sound more like a mix between dolphins and chainsaws.

Marie figured this all out; on this end of the link, I'm a dead weight. It's out in the jungle that earn my keep. You'd be amazed how closely the law of the jungle resembles SERE training. She doesn't talk about the four avatars she'd already lost before InGen took me in, but I know it hurts her about as much as losing my team still hurts me.

I used to drink my coffee black, because that's the only way you can get it in the Legion, but Marie brought me around on sweetener. Hazelnut is her favourite, mine too, but we're running low, so I just drink it black today, enjoying the burn and bitterness for a moment before walking over to the weapons rack, right of the door.

Every piece is inspected and cleaned daily, we're on a dinosaur filled island after all. I, of course, have my personal weapon; an old FN FAMC, painted orange and white as though it were an industrial tool. The thing is a civilian version of what I used in the legion and a bullpup descendant of the AK47. It doesn't need cleaning, I could leave it in a box full of sea water for a year and the thing would be fully operational, but I still strip it down, oil anything that doesn't gleam, tighten anything that thinks about wiggling, and put it back together without looking once, because I'm busy eying my girl's ass.

That's called priorities, son; maintain your gun, stalk pretty girls, drink shit coffee.

I love my life… I owe it all to her…

And I met her in a bar. Still can't wrap my head around that.


End file.
